Extracción de datos de un dispositivo móvil con la herramienta MobilEdit

In order to unravel the first point above, I will briefly explain why Schopenhauer has been criticised for creating confusion with regard to the knowability of the Will. The confusion comes about since there are two positions as to whether the Will is knowable or not. In what follows it is important to note the distinction I make between Will and will. As I see it, ‘Will’ for Schopenhauer is the

undifferentiated noumenon: the thing-in-itself, whereas ‘will’ refers to

manifestations of Will in the phenomenal entity, object or world.⁴⁵ The argument can be summarized as follows: firstly Schopenhauer seems to say that the Will is knowable when he claims that it is a blind, purposeless and malevolent force:

‘The [W]ill, considered purely in itself, is devoid of knowledge, and is only a blind, irresistible urge…’ (WWR1 § 54, Payne, 1969, p. 275).

And:

absence of all aim, of all limits, belongs to the essential nature of the [W]ill in itself, which is an endless striving…although a final goal for it is obviously impossible.

(Ibid., §29, p. 164)

44 ‘Metaphysical egoist’ is Julian Young’s phrase, (Young, 2005, p. 183).

45 Schopenhauer believes there is as much will in a stone as there is in a human being; the difference is that a human being perceives will whereas, to the best of our knowledge, stones do not: ‘Spinoza says that if a stone projected through the air had consciousness, it would imagine it was flying of its own will. I add merely that the stone would be right.’ (WWR1 §25, Payne, 1969, p. 126.)

And:

The [W]ill as the thing-in-itself, constitutes the inner, true, and indestructible nature of man; yet in itself it is without consciousness.

(WWR2, Ch. XIX, Payne, 1969, p. 201) He also suggests a knowability of the Will/noumenon/thing-in-itself which is in some way discoverable through aesthetic contemplation: when a person is

abstracted from ‘self’ and no longer sees a distinction between subject and object.

We see a glimpse of this world as it is and are released from our blinkered human-centric viewpoint even if for a fleeting moment, where the world appears as an undifferentiated whole, where there is no distinction between the entity doing the thinking and the things being thought about, where we are taken out of and beyond ourselves, obliterating the distinction between subject and object and conveying something of the noumenal to us:

the transition from the common knowledge of particular things to knowledge of the Idea takes place suddenly, since knowledge tears itself free from the service of the will precisely by the subject’s ceasing to be merely individual, and being now a pure will-less subject of knowledge…we do not let abstract thought, the concepts of reason, take possession of our consciousness, but, instead of all this, devote the whole power of our mind to perception, sink ourselves completely therein, and let our whole consciousness be filled by the calm contemplation of the natural object actually present, whether it be a landscape, a tree, a rock, a crag, a building, or anything else. We lose ourselves entirely in this object…we forget our individuality, our will, and continue to exist only as pure subject, as clear mirror of the object…and thus we are no longer able to separate the perceiver from the perception, but the two have become one…

(WWR1 §34, Payne, 1974, pp. 178-9) Prominent scholars and commentators who see this strand of thought in

Schopenhauer as evidence that he believes the Will is knowable include Frederick Copleston, Patrick Gardiner, David W. Hamlyn and Christopher Janaway.

Secondly there is the claim by other scholars and commentators that the noumenal is not knowable, such as John E. Atwell, Julian Young and Bryan Magee amongst others.⁴⁶ Magee makes, I think, the strongest case for this in The Philosophy of Schopenhauer where he says that:

[Several]… passages rule out any interpretation of Schopenhauer to the effect that he taught that we have direct knowledge of the noumenon. He says over and over again that we do not, and I do not see how he could have been more explicit on the point..

(Magee, 1997, p. 447)

46 See Janaway, (1998), pp. 258-65; Copleston, (1946), pp. 63-69; Gardiner, (1980), pp. 92-94; and Janaway, (1989), pp. 192-93. Those on the latter side of the debate include: Simmel, (1986), pp.33-34; Hübscher, (1989), pp. 382-85; Magee, (1983), pp. 141-45, and 1990; Atwell, (1995), pp.

120-28; Neeley, (1996): 85-112; Young, (1987), pp. 27-35. Also see Cartwright (2001), p. 50 and

And:

The will is in us only because it is in everything. It constitutes us as it constitutes everything. But it is not directly accessible to our knowledge.

(Ibid., p. 447) One scholar who has recently attempted a synthesis of the opposing views is David Cartwright (2001, pp. 31-54) who points out the main areas of

Schopenhauer’s writings where he (Schopenhauer) seems to give ammunition to each side. (Also see Ch. 2 ‘Text and Counter-text’.) There is no need to give any more than a summary of the argument as above but my point in raising it is twofold: firstly to point out that my uses of some Schopenhauerian terminology – specifically noumenon/noumenal, Will/will and thing-in-itself are debateable; and secondly because it has implications for my interpretation of Schopenhauerian compassion: to understand the undifferentiatedness of Schopenhauerian Will is to understand compassion and to have the possibility of ‘salvation’ from a world which Schopenhauer sees as wretched. If the Will is unknowable then this has implications for compassion and compassion is central to this work.

Both sides of the debate quote Schopenhauer directly to validate their claims and this leaves us with either a straight contradiction in Schopenhauer or a more straightforward answer. I believe the answer lies in Schopenhauer’s restrictions on exactly who is capable of losing themselves in the aesthetic or transcending the self. My contention is that Schopenhauer would take it that ‘normal’ people can know the ‘will’ but not the ‘Will’ – remembering that ‘Will’ is noumenal and

‘will’ constitutes its phenomenal mirror images.⁴⁷ That means they can know only as much of the ‘Will’ as is manifest in the phenomenal world – the world of

‘will’.⁴⁸ A very special entity (Schopenhauer calls this person a saint) can know something of the ‘Will’:

such a man who, after many bitter struggles with his own nature has at last completely conquered, is then left only as pure knowing being, as the unclouded mirror of the world. Nothing can alarm or distress him any more; nothing can any longer move him; for he has cut all the thousand threads of willing which hold us bound to the world…

(WWR1 §68, Payne, 1969, p. 390)

This ‘saint’, however, cannot communicate what they have experienced to the rest of us:

the actual, positive solution to the riddle of the world must be something that the human intellect is wholly incapable of grasping and conceiving; so that if a being of a higher order came and took all the trouble to impart it to us, we should be quite unable to understand any part of his disclosures.

(WWR2, Ch. XVII, Payne, 1969, p. 185)

47 This unusual grammar is quite deliberate since the ‘Will’ is singular but ‘will’ exists in multiple forms in the phenomenal world like leaves from a single stem. They are different and not different to the stem at the same time.

48 This is the world as Representation as in the title of his main work: the ‘will’ is a representation of the ‘Will’.

Anyone who claims to know the ‘Will’ or thing-in-itself in any greater detail is dismissed as a fraudster:

Accordingly, those who profess to know the ultimate, i.e., the first grounds of things, thus a primordial being, an Absolute, or whatever else they choose to call it…are playing the fool, are vain boasters, if indeed they are not charlatans.

(Ibid.)

Those of us who are not saints or enlightened people – i.e. the vast majority of us - cannot know the ‘Will’ unless we have the ability to transcend everyday life through contemplative activity.⁴⁹ Therefore it is correct for Janaway et al to claim the noumenal is knowable (since it is for special enlightened people) and it is right for Magee et al to say that it is unknowable (since it is unknowable for the rest of us).⁵⁰ To state this simply: we can all know the ‘will’ but only the enlightened can know something of the ‘Will’ but we must suspect that even they cannot know it completely nor be able to communicate it to the rest of us. It must be remembered that Schopenhauer only speaks of two worlds (noumenon and phenomenon; thing-in-itself and representation) by way of explanation. There is really only one world which is perceived in different ways depending on your level of metaphysical understanding or compassion. This one world is us yet what we do not understand of it seems to be (and might as well be) another world when in fact the two are one. A parallel in Buddhism is between the six realms of saņsāra and another is in saņsāra/nirvana.

In my view there is a misunderstanding of Will/will and that is why I have some sympathy with Cartwright’s attempt to reconcile the debate; there is a problem in even talking about the things we are talking about as Schopenhauer was aware and this concurs to some considerable extent with Indian Mādhyamaka which I will examine later.

We are left with two problems: firstly what part does aesthetic contemplation play – do you have to be a saint to contemplate? If not then the saint is no more special than the contemplative person or is there a barrier to aesthetic contemplation for the normal people? Secondly how can anyone know something of the ‘Will’

which is noumenal when they themselves are phenomenal?

The first problem is best explained by looking at what Schopenhauer says about aesthetic contemplation and some kind of redemption or salvation through it:

when we enter the state of pure contemplation, we are raised for the moment above all willing, above all desires and cares; we are, so to speak, rid of ourselves. We are no longer the individual that knows in the interest of its constant willing, the correlative of the particular thing to which objects become motives, but the eternal subject of knowing purified of the will, the correlative of the idea. And we know that these moments, when, delivered from the fierce pressure of the

49 This point is debated too.

50 Magee argues we cannot know the ‘Will’ directly which is not the same as saying we cannot

will, we emerge, as it were, from the heavy atmosphere of the earth, are the most blissful that we experience. From this we can infer how blessed must be the life of a man whose will is silenced not for a few moments, as in the enjoyment of the beautiful, but forever, indeed completely extinguished, except for the last glimmering spark that maintains the body and is extinguished with it. Such a man who, after many bitter struggles with his own nature, has at last completely conquered, is then left only as pure knowing being, as the undimmed mirror of the world.

(WWR1 §68, Payne, 1969, p. 390)

The second point, I would suggest, requires someone who is able to straddle both worlds much like the Bodhisattva straddles the worlds of Conventional and Ultimate Truth. Such a person, if they exist, would be unable to explain what they have encountered or experienced since what is beyond our understanding must remain ineffable.

The transcended state experienced during aesthetic contemplation is not to be confused with happiness; it is a state which is neither happy nor unhappy. Even the word ‘contentment’ will not do since the state cannot really be described except as a detachment from a describable positive or negative. Although this is difficult if not impossible to explain, Wilhelm Halbfass gives an elegant portrayal:

Schopenhauer’s invocation of Vedanta and Buddhism is most genuine and significant in connection with his doctrine of the negation of the will, which even his devoted follower J. Frauenstädt called the

“Achilles heel” of the system...⁵¹ More than other traditions the Indian tradition provides him with documents of an “immediate experience”

(“unmittelbare Erfahrung”) of true resignation and “releasement”

(“Gelassenheit”) to which he does not and cannot add any attempts of theoretical explanation…Those who understand its true and concrete meaning are the practitioners of detachment and self-liberation, i.e., the yogins and sannyāsins who forget the entire world “and themselves with it.” What remains in their state of awareness or being is the “primal essence” (“Urwesen”) itself. ⁵²

(Halbfass, 1988, pp. 119-120)

This will-less state is important for understanding Schopenhauerian salvation and the above debate regarding the possibility or not of apprehending the noumenon will affect the discussion of whether or not salvation is possible in

Schopenhauer’s system. The view that in moments of contemplation some contact or even harmony with the noumenon is possible also creates the problem of how there can be peace with a negative and purely blind, destructive and insatiable force. Another view, that there can be no direct knowledge of the noumenal

51 Halbfass refers us to Metaphysik der Sitten, (ed.) Spierling. München, 1985, 39 (introduction).

52 Halbfass refers us to the following: Schopenhauer’s Parerga und Paralipomena §189 (Deussen V, Hübscher VI, 426f.). On ‘quietism’ in its connection with mysticism and asceticism, see also WWR2, Ch. 48 (Deussen II, pp. 702ff.; Hübscher III, pp. 704ff.)

whatsoever, would claim that detached contemplation cannot provide much of an insight into something ultimately unknowable.⁵³

In answer to the point raised by the first view above, as to why we ought to connect with the noumenal Will since this Will is something negative and in its manifestation in us causes the sufferings of the world, Schopenhauer says that we are not actually trying to be that Will (although it is at the foundation of our essence) we are simply to be conscious of it. What you are effectively doing by having this knowledge of what the will-driven ego is up to is recognising the world for the dreadful thing that it is and your existence for the dreadful thing that it is. The point in transcending our ego-driven will is twofold: firstly it is to temporarily escape this supposedly wretched existence (WWR1, p. 390 and p.

411) and secondly it is to permanently escape it. The former is done through aesthetic contemplation and the latter is undertaken by a kind of saint who becomes an ascetic and turns his back on life entirely. Schopenhauer does not exactly provide a Bodhicaryāvatāra to guide us towards transcendence and it is doubtful that he really believed there would be many ‘saints’ produced from the multitudes of human beings anyway. This leads to what some scholars class as a pessimistic conclusion and what Schopenhauer, I am sure, would class as a realistic one.